Hello:

First, I apologize that my answers are not specifically geared to Ghost 12, however, the basic principles should be very similar, and this information should help you.  First, let me offer sympathy for your plight!  I've been working mostly on Dell desktops and laptops, and I am getting VERY tired of setting up XP from scratch on them, although i'm getting really good at it by now!  I use ghost whenever I can, but usually I always end up getting computers to work on that are models I haven't ghosted before, so I can't readily use the images I have.

I'll also mention because it may be applicable how helpful having ghost backups can be.  On the two new Dell laptops I just ghosted, an Inspiron 1501 and a Vostro 1000, the built in resore partition isn't a lot of help as far as i'm concerned, because there were a ton of problems with the shipped images, like outdated drivers and tons of missing windows updates and programs I needed to install.  Having to do all of that on each computer over and over is maddening.

If you're using XP Pro, you may want to look into getting system prep (sys prep) from Microsoft's website to set up each computer for the specific group or person using the image.  Of course, carefully observe the licensing agreements (LOL).

When using Ghost 2003 anyway, the hidden diagnostic and restore partitions can cause problems when ghosting, but there are ways around that, like using a dos version of ghost and being *VERY* careful that you are telling ghost to use the right partitions and/or hard drives and to do the right operations.  Watch out for plugged in flash drives too, I messed up a flash drive once while attempting a ghost operation and selecting it by mistake.

On your questions, generally, ghosting to an external hard drive is a good choice and takes the least amount of time to run a task.  It's a lot easier and better than trying to use optical media, IMO.

I would think you would not want to do a restore point.  You would want to either image the C partition to be copied, or image the entire drive.  If you don't really have much on other partitions on the hard drive, it will be faster and better to just image the C partition,  again IMO.

Lastly, in theory, how ghost will work is it completely overwrites everything in the C partition.  An example: If you copy/take an image from a working XP laptop of it's C partition, let's say the working C partition is a total of 60GB and windows XP is using 10GB of the 60GB.  When you go to transfer the image to the new Vista laptop, let;s say C is only 40GB with 15GB being used for/by Vista.  When you run the ghost operation, ghost will write the 10GB XP partition to the new machine, and adjust everything for you so that even though the original image was taken from a 60GB partition, you will end up with 10GB of XP and about 30GB of free space, the partition will automatically be adjusted by ghost to fit onto the new 40GB partition.  The only way this would not work in theory is if you were trying to write more data than the space you have, like trying to write 45GB of used up image to a partition on a drive that's only 40GB.

When all done, Vista will be gone, and NO need to format the Vista machine before ghosting or anything else, in theory.   I like using dos ghost once you're used to it, instead of hot imaging with windows active.  I suspect there are others who would feel the same way.  I'm sure someone can tell you how to adjust this info for Ghost 10 or 12, if need be.  I would be careful not to lose any information you need until you're used to ghosting.  Before I would wipe out the Vista laptops, I always take copious screen shots of installed programs, device manager, control panel, start menus, etc. to look at later if i'm trying to re-do an operating system from scratch later...

Hope this helps some...

Lee B.